Horse Industry Controversies

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With big names like California Chrome, Bayern, and Shared Belief taking the field for the Breeder’s Cup Classic, taking place at California's Santa Anita Park on Nov. 1, it’s a safe bet that drug testing in American horse racing will be an ongoing topic.

The California Horse Racing Board (CHRB) has started evaluating cobalt levels in racehorses competing at tracks in that state and in certain necropsy scenarios, according to a March 4 memo from CHRB Equine Medical Director Rick Arthur, DVM.

When an owner makes the difficult decision to euthanize a horse with laminitis, it's often because the horse is simply in too much pain to justify prolonging treatment. For this reason, researchers are continually trying to come up with improved analgesic (pain relief) methods. Andrew van Eps, BVSc, PhD, MACVSc, Dipl. ACVIM, senior lecturer in Equine ...

The British Horseracing Authority (BHA) announced Aug. 7 the conclusion of the investigation into the use of "Sungate," a veterinary product which contains stanozolol, an anabolic steroid and, therefore, a prohibited substance under the authority's rules of racing.

By its very nature the practice of “milkshaking,” or administering bicarbonate or other alkalinizing substances to racehorses as performance enhancers, can be tough to pinpoint—horses metabolize the substances quickly, and testing laboratories must look for elevated blood total carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations as evidence. So to prese...

Veterinarians screen racehorses regularly for evidence of performance enhancers, aiming to use sample collection methods that yield accurate and consistent results. Blood-draw supplies vary among veterinarians, however, and could conceivably impact test results, so a Purdue University research team recently evaluated how such variables impact a common mea...